Must See of the Month:
Summary:
The Bondurants are a Depression-era bootlegging family in Franklin County,
Virginia. Things are going well for them in their small town until the
authorities threaten them, demanding a cut of their profits. The Bondurants
must decide: pay or start a war. Filmmakers:
Director John Hillcoat’s last two films (The Proposition and The Road) have presented the
world in a very bleak dilapidated way. His visual style should lend itself very
well to this gangster western. Plus, he is working again with screenwriter Nick Cave (who is also
co-scoring the film), the team that produced one of the better westerns of the
last decade. Hillcoat also is working again with past collaborators composer Warren Ellis (The
Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford), cinematographer Benoit Delhomme (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas)
and production designer Chris
Kennedy. Cast: The film has a fantastic
cast with Tom Hardy, Shia LeBeouf and Jason Clarke as the Bondurant
brothers. Gary
Oldman, Guy Pierce, Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska, Dane DeHaan, Noah Taylor, and Lew Temple feature in support. Expectations: Lawless is easily the film I am most
interested in seeing this August. It has maybe the second best cast of any film
this year so far (after The
Dark Knight Rises), and happens to straddle the line between two of my
favorite genres – gangster films and westerns (sort of reminding me of Last Man Standing in that way),
both of which are rapidly disappearing from modern cinema (especially
westerns). My one holdup is that Hillcoat has not really cemented himself as a
great director. Yes, his visual style is brilliant and works well with the
material he picks, but his ability to craft a compelling narrative structure is
not quite good enough yet. The Road especially greatly suffered from a
narrative that both dragged and did not seem to embody the emotional weight
that the characters and scenario would suggest it should. That said, from what I
have seen of Lawless, it looks like it is going to be very good with great action
set pieces. Fans of gangster films and westerns should definitely check this
one out. Trailer: Here.
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